Yeah, the original thin clients were basically useless without the server they connected to, but nowadays even computers the size of a stick of gum are plenty powerful enough for consuming webpages and videos.
You still need peripherals like mouse, keyboard and screen but you might get them as part of the package (sounds like you already have them though).
When I last used Debian, I found myself very annoyed with the lag in the package manager. This is a very long time ago (15 years?), so probably isn’t the case any longer. However, due to laziness (or proactively avoiding a bikeshed rabbit hole) I didn’t check and just chose Ubuntu over Debian the other day because of that.